To Learn a Word
by ambiguousArchetype
Summary: Selcouth, his father had described the burning sky. Something that is strange, and unfamiliar, and marvelous, all at once. Hanabusa hears a bit of that raging, brilliant, selcouth dawn in Sayori's laugh. Or, the AU in which Hanabusa Aido and Sayori Wakaba navigate through six years at Hogwarts, and learn a few lessons they don't expect. Part One of The Armada series


**PROMPT: you're muggle born, and you insist on wearing your muggle clothes on the weekends, and i just cannot get over the way you look in those jeans, like, god help me**

* * *

The first thing Hanabusa Aido notices about Sayori Wakaba is how unbelievably shiny her mouth is. Or rather, how shiny her teeth are.

 _Abnormally_ shiny. _Distractingly_ shiny. Hanabusa Aido doesn't even know her name, but he decides that this girl's teeth could probably belong in the Department of Mysteries with all the other inexplicable wonders of the world. Merlin himself would be in awe. They are just _that shiny._

As they wait for their Sorting Ceremony to start, Hanabusa tries to hear what his cousin Akatsuki is shouting from the Gryffindor table, but that strange girl's teeth keep catching the dim candlelight and throwing him off. Even as the tall, mean-looking witch with eyes just like his mother's when she's angry is leading them into the Great Hall for the very, very first time, Hanabusa can't help but glance every now and then towards the occasional glint to his right.

He is the very first person to be called up to be Sorted, and Hanabusa holds his head high and walks without hesitation up the steps. He already knows which House he'll be in. His parents have all but carved it into his brain. He's _beyond_ sure about it. And Hanabusa would later claim he hadn't even felt the Hat touch his head before it belted out, " _RAVENCLAW_!"

As he is walking down, however, Hanabusa is distracted again by a momentary glimpse of brightness, and he almost stumbles over his robes on the last step. To his great relief, only Akatsuki sees, and Hanabusa doesn't particularly care what his cousin thinks. Instead, he struts to the Ravenclaw table, where people clap his back and shake his hand and make room for him on their bench.

He avoids looking towards the Sorting Hat for the rest of the night.

* * *

Sayori Wakaba has only had braces for a month and already she feels that she's had them for a decade. It's pointless, she'd argued at her parents. If I'm going to some magical school, surely they'll have spells and enchantments and things to magically fix them!

But her parents are adamant, and Sayori Wakaba requests braces of different metallic colours that sparkle in the light. After all, if she is to wear train tracks on her teeth, they had better look bloody good. And no, she doesn't want to mind her language, young lady!

Sayori Wakaba's mother is a lawyer. Sayori Wakaba's father is a government official. And as of September 1st, Sayori Wakaba is a witch. A human with magical blood running through her veins, who can weave spells and create anything out of nothing with an eleven-and-a-half-inch beech wood stick, who can fly on brooms and brew potions and live in a magical castle in Scotland for half the year. At least, according to these strange books she is required to buy in a place called Diagon Alley.

But Sayori has always been a fast learner. And by the time she arrives at the glowing castle described in _Hogwarts, a History_ , Sayori has thoroughly read all her magical textbooks. She won't be left behind just because she's what people in the Wizarding world call a "muggle-born".

She's put in Ravenclaw, one of the four Hogwarts Houses, and in the next few days she attends the strangest classes in her life with some of the strangest people she's ever met. And Sayori Wakaba never, ever wants to leave.

* * *

Sometimes, Hanabusa just wants to punch someone. Or scream bloody murder. Either one, really. And right now he'd very much like to inflict both on his Potions partner, some bloke named Lester.

To be very clear, Hanabusa excelled at Potions. He would even go so far as to call himself a Potions prodigy. Hanabusa seemed to know exactly when to deviate slightly from instruction and when to stick firmly to it. And it's not that Hanabusa had a problem with working with his peers, far from it. He didn't mind working with people. He'd never once complain if his partner was, quite frankly, terrible at the subject. He didn't even care if he did all the work in the process. What he did mind, however, was when his partner happened to be horrendous at Potion-making _and_ felt the need to question everything he did.

"Don't you think you're stirring it the wrong way, Aido?"

"It says _clockwise,_ Lester. Unless your clock functions differently, I'm stirring it _clockwise._ "

"Well, that's after we put in the pickled slugs. It doesn't say we stir it clockwise after that."

Hanabusa is saved from his sudden urge to commit homicide by a sudden explosion in the back of the room. Whipping his head around, he sees a table emitting copious amounts of blue smoke, its occupants scattered about the floor. A bronze-haired girl from the table next to it rushes over to help her brunette friend off the floor, the bright pieces of metal on her teeth glinting as she begins to speak softly.

It's been half a year since he last saw them, but once again Hanabusa is momentarily pulled from reality. Braces, he recalls from a Muggle book he'd once read on a whim. They're braces _._ The girl asks the professor to be excused, and she leads her friend out the door, no doubt to the Hospital Wing.

Shaking his head, Hanabusa turns back around to his cauldron, where the potion is emitting the same red sparks described in the book. While Lester is distracted, Hanabusa corks a vial of the potion and hands it to the professor. As he walks out the door, Hanabusa sourly thinks that this would probably be the only passing grade Lester would ever receive in this class.

* * *

It's the last Quidditch match of her second year at Hogwarts, and Sayori has never seen the castle more deserted. No longer so intensely intrigued by the flying sport as she'd been in her first year, Sayori had opted to sit this one out, walking away from the rushing tide of students headed for the pitch. Besides, the match is between Slytherin and Hufflepuff, and she has a novel to finish.

Her booted feet echo as she walks up the moving staircases back to Ravenclaw tower. Even from the library she had been able to hear the distant screams of the spectators, and Sayori finds she rather prefers the peace and quiet of the empty common room anyway.

Well, almost empty. Pushing through the door, Sayori spies a head of wavy blond locks half hidden behind the back of a large sofa. In the silence, the sound of the door opening seems to catch the person's attention, and he turns to look at Sayori with clear blue eyes.

Hanabusa Aido. Sayori had read about his grandfather, the famous Mahoutokoro wizard who'd created a spell for tracking Disapparating wizards, or some such. The fact that the boy himself was one of the more rowdy of Ravenclaw House and loved to talk very loudly and obnoxiously at meals hadn't hurt his fame either. She'd wondered sometimes why he had opted to grace Hogwarts with his truly _charming_ presence rather than attend the Japanese school his genius grandfather had learned from.

He's still staring at Sayori as though he'd never seen another human before, and Sayori decides to say something. "Er, sorry to disturb you, Aido. I thought everyone was down at the pitch."

Hanabusa's eyes travel over her, and Sayori realises he keeps glancing up to look at her mouth. A mixture of self-consciousness and irritation rises within her, and it must read on her face because the boy catches himself and abruptly looks away. "Uh, no it's fine, er…"

"Sayori." Honestly, she's only sat in front of him in Charms for two years _._

"Right." He turns back around, and Sayori can only deal with so much pretentiousness in one day, so she settles into the softest armchair she can find on the other side of the room and tucks her jean-clad legs underneath her. Content to ignore her Housemate, she burrows into her overlarge sweater and begins to read.

She doesn't get two pages into her novel before she feels the blond boy's shocking eyes piercing her forehead, and Sayori tiredly looks up and meets them. "Would you prefer I leave? I reckon you won't accomplish anything if you keep staring at me."

It's the end of her second year and Sayori Wakaba is sick of people's prying eyes on her teeth and her clothes and yes they scream Muggle-born but she refuses to be ashamed of her own status. The last Wizarding War is long over, but mindsets and prejudice change far too slowly. Sayori has always been a perceptive girl, however, and when she reads Hanabusa's eyes she knows he doesn't mean to be condescending, only curious about the ornaments on her teeth.

Although she keeps her voice gentle and her tone more teasing than reprimanding, Hanabusa blushes fiercely. "I was only staring because your teeth keep catching the light. It's bloody distracting."

With that, he turns himself fully around, and it's Sayori's turn to flush. Disgruntled, she remembers to keep her mouth tightly closed for the rest of the day.

* * *

Hanabusa doesn't really know what to make of this Sayori girl. Before that day in the common room, she'd only been 'that muggle-born with the braces' he sometimes caught a fleeting glimpse of in the Great Hall or the library. Now that he's matched a name to a face, he's beginning to see more and more of her: in the classroom with her hand raised, by the lake with that brunette Hufflepuff friend of hers, in the common room biting her lip as she writes her Charms essay. And no matter where she is, her braces always manage to catch the light and turn Hanabusa's eye. Not to mention the girl constantly felt the need to dress in the most noticeably Muggle clothing on the weekends.

It's spring in his third year at Hogwarts, and Hanabusa is loitering in Hogsmeade with Akatsuki, a proud Slytherin girl named Ruka, and a sullen Gryffindor who went by Zero. Hanabusa is probably the only one of their group humourous enough to appreciate the strangeness of the situation.

As they pass by Honeyduke's, something large and rough collides with Hanabusa's back so hard he stumbles forward into Zero. "What the—"

"Oh, I'm so sorr—Zero!" A bright voice cuts through the warm air, and Hanabusa turns to find himself face to face with the brunette Hufflepuff. Her face is split into a cheerful grin, and in her arms she carries boxes upon boxes of Every-Flavour Beans and Sugar Quills.

Akatsuki and Ruka take this opportunity to walk off alone, and the girl—Yuuki, Zero called her—begins to chat animatedly with the stoic Gryffindor, her apology long since forgotten. Hanabusa rubs the back of his head and sighs.

"I'm sorry about the door. Yuuki can be a tad clumsy sometimes."

Dammit, he knows that voice. Hanabusa turns back to the doorway where Sayori Wakaba is standing in a light green sundress and a wide-brimmed hat, holding what appears to be even more boxes of sweets. The lines of her face are pulled into an apologetic grimace, and there's a noticeable blush on her cheekbones. But what really hits Hanabusa is the fact that her teeth no longer sparkle.

"Er, yeah. I gathered from that day in second year when she overturned her cauldron in Potions. Didn't you used to have braces?" He may be a magical genius, but tact has never really been Hanabusa's forte.

Sayori looks—rightfully—confused. "Um, yes. I got them taken off over the Christmas holiday, actually…why are you always so focused on my teeth? How do you even know what braces are?"

What is this, the Inquisition? "What—no, I just—your teeth were always really noticeable…and I do read!" Hanabusa can't believe how upfront this girl is.

Sayori looks at him strangely, and he gathers his thoughts. "Besides, half my family is either half-blood or Muggle-born. I'm not entirely ignorant."

"I didn't say you were. I just…I've always been used to people poking fun at my teeth. Sorry I got defensive." Her expression conveys genuine apology, and Hanabusa feels more awkward and flustered than ever, two things he rarely ever feels. It seems this girl liked to bring it out in him.

"Well, at the very least your teeth won't be blinding everyone anymore." Again, tact has never come easily to Hanabusa, and to Sayori's credit she doesn't throw back a retort. But if Hanabusa had been paying any attention to her after he apparently ended their conversation, he would have seen her eyes flash and her face darken just so as to be noticeable.

Yuuki invites Zero to walk back up to the castle with her, and Hanabusa is not about to be left by himself in Hogsmeade, so he silently curses Akatsuki and his ladylove and treks back up to Hogwarts after them. On the way, he can't help but steal glances at the girl who has managed to get under his skin with such ease.

Sayori Wakaba's hair is a medley of gold and amber and curls towards her chin. She has gentle features and brown eyes and as far as looks go, doesn't really provide an overall lasting impression. But they are at the age where boys and girls like to look at each other rather than away, and Hanabusa grudgingly admits that the green in her dress contrasts very nicely with her skin.

Her hat, however, is just ridiculous. After the brim pushes into his arm for the tenth time Hanabusa decides there should be a universal limit on how obnoxiously wide sunhats are.

* * *

It's times like these that Sayori can't for the life of her understand the female gender. And Sayori has understood—or tolerated, more like—a lot of what's been going on with her fellow peers. Her dorm-mates spend countless hours discussing and verbally dissecting the boys at Hogwarts, ranking them on how organised they are, or how straight their noses are, or even how attractive they'd be without something like their eyebrows. Yuuki tells her all about a boy in Slytherin she's become infatuated with, and Sayori personally believes this Kaname character is much too dodgy to be trustworthy. But who is she to crush her friend's desires?

And then one day she feels it. The tension in the air suddenly snaps taut as the girls in her Charms class all seem to perk up, their hands flying to their hair and their faces and their whispers deafening the room. Sayori has seen this too many times to be unfamiliar with the situation. When she turns around to sneak a glance at the new arrival, however, Sayori swallows the urge to roll her eyes.

Because of all people she'd expected to be able to silence a room, Hanabusa Aido is not one of them.

This isn't the first time he's been the subject of female gossip, Sayori realises. It seems to her that all Aido had to do was grow a foot, muss his hair more often, and make the Quidditch team, and the whole of Hogwarts had their eyes on him. Now there are groups of girls hovering near the Entrance Hall on Hogsmeade weekends, anxiously craning their necks and squealing when Hanabusa Aido appears. There are entire crowds in the corridors outside every classroom he might be in. In the common room, girls of various ages listen enraptured as Hanabusa explains in a carrying voice how he supposedly managed to best Gryffindor seventh year Albert Collins in a duel, or made an impossible amount of saves during Quidditch practise.

School hasn't started for two months, and Sayori doesn't know how much more giggling and hair flipping she can take. Nevertheless, she is an optimist at heart and while she clings to the belief that Hanabusa Aido isn't inherently cruel or vain or flighty, fame seems to encourage his potential to be so. After all, he didn't seem to be nearly this…bigheaded in second year.

And so, when the boy in question all but struts to his seat, Sayori turns back to her notes and ignores him, as she's always done. In class they learn Banishing charms, and Sayori has to add _Depulso_ to her agenda of spells to practise. Honestly, between Charms and Transfiguration she won't have time to finish her utter mass of _assigned_ homework.

That's why after lunch on a blissfully peaceful Saturday, Sayori finds an empty classroom on a deserted second-floor corridor to practise. She brings a rubber ball she uses as a stress reliever and by mid-afternoon she sends it bouncing off every crevice in the room. Transfiguring her ball into a mouse is annoyingly difficult, but Sayori is pleased to see she's at least managed to create a very rotund rodent.

It's harder than the other spells in spades, but she's gotten close before. Surely, when attempting to conjure one's first Patronus, silver wisps counted for something, especially for someone in their fourth year of magical education. When she closes her eyes, Sayori thinks of a trip to Coney Island in America with her parents, the only vacation she remembers where her father had managed to put down his phone for more than ten minutes and her mother had not cared when Sayori licked the cotton candy off her fingers. It'd been the happiest she'd seen her parents in each other's presence, the first time she'd heard a genuine chuckle from them since she was ten. With the memory of laughter in her head, Sayori speaks firmly and clearly.

This time, it's not just silver smoke. Shapes erupt from her wand, and Sayori watches in awe as an indistinct white-blue blaze hovers in front of her, illuminating the tiny space with a kaleidoscope of glowing tendrils almost like those at the bottom of a sunlit pool. It's far more corporeal than her previous trials, and Sayori beams as the Patronus' glow becomes almost blinding.

The door to her classroom opens suddenly, and Sayori gapes at the boy who enters. His wild blond hair has been ruffled out of its deliberate bed-head style, his shirt is rumpled, his blue eyes are wide and alert. And then they fix on her, and Hanabusa's fearful expression is marred by a fleeting crease of confusion. Sayori opens her mouth to ask just why he's all but thrown himself into the room when Hanabusa frantically gestures for her to be quiet.

Then she hears it. Female voices, at least five of them, filling the corridor with giggles and teasing calls. Sayori presses her lips together and Hanabusa tenses against the door as the sounds draw ever so slowly away from the classroom. The girl glances back at her Patronus, now dim and translucent and small, and lowers her wand to put it out. Her concentration is shot, anyway.

When the voices die completely, Hanabusa breathes out a hard sigh, and Sayori attempts to speak. "Trouble in paradise?"

Hanabusa looks at her, emotionless. "Something like that. Practising Defence, then?"

Sayori shrugs, pulling her cardigan closer around herself. "Not really. Trying it on a whim. You know—" she starts before she can stop herself, "maybe they'd let you alone if you paid them less attention."

Sayori knows she doesn't know him, knows she's not in any position to be handing him advice, but part of her wants to see if he's capable of being more than just fickle and conceited. Hanabusa shoves one hand in his pocket and the other in his hair. "Hard to ignore birds when they're hovering behind every door."

"I don't know. It doesn't seem like your cousin's having such a hard time with that."

"He's dating Hogwarts' resident she-demon Ruka Souen. It's different."

Catching Hanabusa's tone, Sayori bites her lip before she manages to insult him further. "Nevermind. It's just a suggestion."

Hanabusa just looks at her, and Sayori awkwardly tangles her fingers in her cardigan. She's been this close to him before—just last week they wrestled a very temperamental fanged geranium together in Herbology, much to the jealousy of the other fourth-year girls—but the oddness of the situation renders her speechless. Sayori's eyes are never still, glancing at the walls and the door and the floor before returning to the boy in front of her. Hanabusa's expression is calm, bored even, but his eyes fix her with a stare as brilliant as starlight, and in that brief moment Sayori thinks she might understand what the other girls rave about when Hanabusa Aido comes up in a conversation.

Then Hanabusa turns away and it's over. "I think they're gone now, so I'll go. Sorry to bother you, Wakaba."

Thrown, Sayori barely manages to get out a reply before Hanabusa turns on his heel and slips out the door. The air in the room is thicker than before, the silence almost suffocating, and a perplexed Sayori lets out a huff she didn't know she'd been holding. It must be exhausting, she thinks almost derisively, to be so popular that you have to beat the girls off with a stick. After a horrible, indulgent moment, she bites her lip in guilt. Hanabusa had clearly been far more annoyed than he let on, and while he _does_ only have himself to blame for his predicament, Sayori has heard the plots her dorm-mates have conjured up, and even she finds it incredibly difficult not to pity their intended victim.

Shoving her wand back into her jeans pocket, Sayori picks up the re-Transfigured rubber ball and strides out of the classroom. There's no way she'll be able to concentrate after that debacle.

* * *

It figures that the very person that'd constantly drawn Hanabusa's attention those first few years at Hogwarts would manage to steal her way into every strange circumstance he found himself in. He'd thought she was doing it purposefully at first, just another one of many girls trying every tactic to gain his notice. He dismissed the arrogant notion after she all but ran away from him after they'd nearly collided behind a shelf in the library, saying only a terse "Excuse me" before leaving. Any of the other groups of girls loitering in the hallways would have lingered, would have tried to strike up a conversation or at the very least sent him a few flirtatious smiles. And because Hanabusa was still a young and particularly conceited fifteen-year-old boy, he naturally assumed Sayori Wakaba was an outlier, a girl that was strange and unusual and _different_ for considering him as anything but a work of art.

It also figured that the very skill that Hanabusa prided himself in—his charm with women—was the source of one complication he couldn't run away from.

Ravenclaw had won the Quidditch Cup after a long, brutal game against Gryffindor, and the House had celebrated long into the night. Hanabusa and his teammates were busy doing a very loud reenactment of the game when a girl a year above his—Ally, her name was, or was it Amy—pulled him out of the crowd and asked him to meet her in the Astronomy Tower after the party was over. Drunk on attention and the firewhiskey a few seventh years had stashed, Hanabusa had eagerly agreed and returned to the crowd of Ravenclaws waiting to hear about his apparently _superb_ save that was the _real_ reason they'd won the game.

Now, the revelers have begun to drift off, little by little heading off to bed. Hanabusa stumbles out of the common room and down the staircase into a dimly lit hallway just outside the Tower, ignoring whatever lingering doubt the whiskey hasn't washed away. He doesn't make it more than a few metres before they see him. Three tall, fifth year Gryffindors with far too much time and far too much bitterness saunter towards him, their long shadows creeping across the stone floor. It takes Hanabusa a moment, but he recognises Dan Kohli and Sam Adler from the Gryffindor team.

"Well, if it isn't the Golden Boy himself. Shouldn't you be a good little fourth year and go to bed?"

It's worth noting again that, even on a good day, tact has never come as easily to Hanabusa as some other social skills have. But it's no longer a good day—in fact, it's around one in the morning—and he's drunk and exhausted and too busy trying to convince himself that he's not insecure, that he knows what he's set out to do, to even _begin_ to think about delicacy. So he lets all his demons loose.

"Shouldn't you lot be sulking in your own common room? Or is the stench of failure too strong to handle?"

The third boy—Gregory Folger, his name was—starts forward but Adler swings his arm out to stop him. "Of course, _you'd_ be familiar with the stench of failure. Your whole country reeks of it."

"Resorted to racism, have you? I hope Hannah appreciates your pathetically outdated attempts at wit. Or is it Rachel this week? I can never keep track of the girls you pay to walk to class with you."

Kohli sneers. "Speaking of, Anna Morley was eager to talk on her way up to the Astronomy Tower. She going to be your first, little virgin?" He leers as his friends laugh, and suddenly Hanabusa can no longer feel the ground beneath him. "Poor little Jap can't get shagged without getting a bird piss-drunk first, eh?"

He wants to retort, but that feeling that he knows what he's set out to do is gone, and his mind is reeling with uncertainty and the lasting effects of inebriation. The Gryffindors' laughter rings in his ears, and he feels like he's burning and numb at the same time.

"Looks like Aido here's _scared_. What's wrong, lover boy? Afraid to disappoint?" Folger jeers. "Titchy Oriental isn't Morley's flavour, anyway. Even if she is drunk off her ass."

"Neither is pretentious _dickhead_ , apparently, considering she ditched you."

Her voice echoes loud and clear in the dark, narrow corridor, and it's enough to snap Hanabusa out of his drunken spiral. Sayori Wakaba is standing just outside the common room door, wearing shorts and a baggy tee with a picture of a group of blokes and 'The Who' printed on it, looking for all the world like she's just about to head to bed. But her wand is in her hand and there is steel in the set of her shoulders and she gives the Gryffindors a look that Hanabusa thinks could give the Headmistress a run for her money.

Adler shifts uncomfortably, a scowl set in his face. "Who's this? One of your pathetic little groupies?"

"Muggle-born too, by the looks of her. Get lost, runt. Don't think that twig of yours will do you any good," spits a red-faced Folger.

Sayori pastes on an innocent expression. "Funny, I hear that's exactly what Morley said when she broke up with you. Clearly your attempts at wit are just as outdated as your friends'. "

And Hanabusa is so floored by the fact that this is the same quiet, soft-spoken Sayori Wakaba who had never so much as batted an eye when a professor butchered her name, that he cannot appreciate the distinctly mauve color Folger's face has turned. The girl's words still echo down the dark hall, and through his shock Hanabusa finally realises that it is not simply the work of his plastered mind. Her voice had been magnified by an enchantment of her own doing, and from the quiet mews of a familiar cat slinking along the walls it is clear whose attention she has been trying to attract.

"Shut your mouth, you little _bitch._ " Kohli snarls, his hand reaching into his pocket for his wand. "Or—"

"Or what? You'll call me a _Muggle-born_ again? For all Gryffindor's talk of chivalry and courage, you're so quick to chuck low blows about blood supremacy and race when you can't think of any decent retorts. And to think that after the last bloody war you lot would've _learned_ by now!" Her voice shakes in anger, carrying further still, and now Hanabusa can see Filch's distant lamplight at the far end of the hallway. "In any case, you'd better save your breath and hope your chances of escaping aren't as narrow as your minds. I doubt Filch will take kindly to being called a 'pathetic little groupie'."

Muttering a quick " _Sonorus",_ she grabs Hanabusa by the sleeve and dashes up the staircase just as Filch begins barking at them. She reaches the bronze knocker and mutters the answer to a riddle he doesn't hear before pulling him inside, her breathing loud and rocky with unrestrained fury. It is only marginally brighter in the common room; the partygoers have all gone up to bed, and her pants are the only sound he can hear. Before Hanabusa can react, she pounces. "Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking, picking a fight with those three?"

"Oi, they picked a fight with _me._ " Hanabusa's grasp on sobriety is quickly returning. "And I was handling it fine until you showed."

"If by 'handling it fine' you mean _cocking everything up,_ then yes I suppose you were!" Sayori's face is a mixture of weariness and anger. "And that's quite an attitude for someone who's just narrowly avoided getting punched in the face _and_ detention."

"I didn't need your help!" And suddenly the room is quiet again, and Hanabusa is glowering at the girl next to him, his heart pounding in his chest and his mind still dizzy with alcohol. Sayori says nothing, only stares at him with an expression that screams disbelief and fury and disgust all at once. The neckline of her too-large t-shirt slips, and for a moment Hanabusa can see nothing except the smooth, pale skin of her shoulder. As a result, he hears too late what has just slipped from his mouth.

"Well, it's really great to see that taking the mickey out of you hasn't done anything to your egotism! Good for you, mate!" She marches towards the girl's dormitories. "And do me a favour? Next time someone wants to kick your arse, let them!"

She disappears in a huff, and Hanabusa feels like punching something, even as his booze-addled brain refocuses on the image of her shirt slipping over her shoulder. Then he feels his stomach spin and leap into his throat, and his mind is effectively wiped clear of anything except the feeling of cold porcelain and the taste of regret that lingers on his tongue until morning.

* * *

The Hogwarts Express passes over a particularly rocky stretch of country, the wheels generating a great barrage of rattling and creaking; however, this noise doesn't register to Sayori until a good minute has passed. She is far too occupied gawking at the blond boy that has just strode in, a blue prefect's badge pinned to his disheveled robes, and is consequently hurling himself into the nearest seat with no small amount of apathetic flair. She sits down numbly, and schools her face into neutrality, but not before she notices that Hanabusa is decidedly avoiding her gaze.

Not that that sort of attitude is new to her. Ever since the night she'd happened across an intoxicated Hanabusa Aido being ridiculed by those particularly sore members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, the boy in question had taken it upon himself to entirely erase her existence from his mind. This hadn't bothered Sayori in the slightest—he'd hardly ever noticed her to begin with, and her opinion of him had dropped enough that she wanted very little to do with _him_ —and the rest of her fourth year passed by without so much as a word exchanged. She herself did not especially want a reminder of that night, either. On the rare occasion she did think back to the words she'd thrown at those boys, she cringed inwardly. Around Hanabusa Aido her every comment twisted into something terribly caustic, and anyone who knew Sayori knew that she had never been one for crudeness or snide. It seems this boy liked to bring it out in her.

It became aware to her, however, that though she was perfectly fine sitting in facing chairs in the common room, Hanabusa could not. He often opted to sit in chaises or sofas a distance away, surrounded by a group of friends and admirers, but if it so happened that the only remaining seat was directly opposite hers, he'd not even so much as tilt his face in her direction, craning his neck away and upsetting some of the unfortunate girls who chose to stand inside the field of view of Sayori's seat.

At first, this amused Sayori so much that she sometimes wandered out of her seat to see how attuned Hanabusa was to her exact location, glancing at him to watch as he swiveled his head away, or made up weak excuses to leave the room altogether. Her friend Henrietta Weber, the only other girl in their dorm that did not have a massive obsession with Hanabusa, found it extraordinarily funny when Hanabusa immediately turned tail and ran at the sight of the two girls walking toward him in a deserted corridor.

Then he agreed to begin tutoring Yuuki. Sayori knew her friend was struggling with many of her classes, and often helped her with her Transfiguration and Defence homework. When her Potions grades began to drop into dangerous territory, Zero had somehow managed to enlist Hanabusa help in bringing them back up. And sooner than Sayori would've guessed, Yuuki's Potions grades began to make their ascent. In time, she began to—once again—realise that perhaps Hanabusa Aido, despite all of his arrogance and drama and vanity, was much more than that.

It changed nothing, however, that they shared a pupil. Of course, there were far more awkward almost-encounters, but Hanabusa excused himself quite enthusiastically whenever he saw Sayori approach Yuuki, and that was that. They never spoke. It helped, Sayori guessed at the time, that their professors never thought to pair them up. Alphabetically, they'd never be partners, and they were doing so well in the classes they had together that no professor would give them the easier option of working together.

Then again, she thinks grudgingly as the Head students finally close the compartment door, their stellar grades were no doubt one of the reasons why they were being thrown together now. She turns her attention to the Heads, who explain the process of awarding and docking points, detentions, organising the first years, meeting times, and supervising special occasions. To his credit, Hanabusa looks significantly more attentive than he did when he walked in, but he still looks everywhere except at her.

When Head Boy Matthew Ang announces the patrol timetable for the first week, however, Sayori stiffens. "You'll all get a chance to patrol with every one of your fellow prefects, but you'll most likely end up patrolling more often with the prefects of your own House. Partly due to the fact that you're more familiar with your House's prefects, and mainly due to the fact that it's a pain switch up the schedule every month, and therefore we don't want to."

Sayori doesn't join in the appreciative chuckles of the other prefects. Neither does Hanabusa.

"And if you have any _reasonable_ issues with who you've been assigned with, come to us after the meeting." Head Girl Pamela Clark finishes, her steely gaze daring anyone to cross her as she hands out the schedules. Out of the corner of her eye, Sayori sees Hanabusa's face darken.

After the meeting, Sayori is quick to return to Yuuki's compartment, but not before she stops to speak to Hanabusa. "Since we're patrolling at nine, I'll meet you near the library five minutes before. Working our way up is better than having to climb back up to the Tower after our time's up."

"Fine," is all he says before he brushes his way past her into another car. Under her breath, Sayori sighs. If that is what working with him will be like for the entire year, she doesn't think even Clark's threatening gaze will stop her from requesting a change of partner. Exasperated, she returns to her compartment, eager to complain to Yuuki about her unavoidable predicament.

The Sorting Ceremony and Welcome feast seem shorter than ever, and Sayori blushes beet red when her shouts don't reach the first-years and Hanabusa has to take over. On the trek up, however, her embarrassment quickly gives way to annoyance. This is ridiculous. She is Sayori Wakaba, and she has never been afraid of what anyone thought about her, and Hanabusa Aido, of all people, cannot intimidate her. After all, _she_ saved _him_ that night last May _._ If one of them were to feel shame or embarrassment in the other's presence, it would be him.

So she marches the first years into the common room, and spends the rest of the evening unpacking and laughing with Henrietta when she tells Sayori about how her mad aunt took the Knight Bus every day that summer for kicks. And when Hanabusa finally shows up—shoulder slouched, hands in his pockets, tie limp around his neck—a minute after nine, Sayori crosses her arms over her incredibly _Muggle_ tee and meets his eyes with an expression that's part iron and part silk and all gentle disapproval. "You're late."

* * *

Once again, Hanabusa finds that he doesn't know what to make of Sayori Wakaba.

After that first night, during which they exchanged a grand total of eight words, she's made it clear that she could give a rat's arse what he does or says or thinks. And after the first month, she's made it clear that no matter who she patrols with, she will dress however the hell she wants. And whether he wants to admit it or not, Hanabusa is slightly in awe of her and her ever-changing outfits. The t-shirt-and-jeans ensemble she wears the first week quickly changes into colourful skirts that brush her knees, and as the weather grows colder that is replaced by flannel and leggings. Her shiny prefect badge is always pinned to her clothes, and from what Hanabusa's gathered from the other prefects, she almost never wears her actual school uniform when patrolling at night.

He doesn't let himself think about it, though. They patrol together three hours a day, seven days a week, two weeks every other month. They do their job. And sooner or later, Hanabusa finds that he has grown accustomed to the silence between them, and the year passes by quietly.

It starts in the spring. O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. season is upon them, and after many, many arguments, Pamela Clark reduces the fifth-year and seventh-year prefects' patrol times. Hanabusa doesn't mind either way—he's never had too much trouble balancing his studies and Quidditch with prefect duties—and with two weeks every month of patrols he finds much more time to waste practising on the Quidditch pitch.

Then one night, for the first time since they'd been made prefects, Sayori is late. Hanabusa peers into the dark library, wondering if perhaps she might be perusing for books, and is greeted only by a glare from Madam Pince. Five minutes pass, and then another ten minutes, and Hanabusa is vaguely considering skiving off patrol altogether when his partner finally shows up, face flushed and out of breath. But that isn't what grabs his attention. What Hanabusa notices first isn't the fact that she is wearing a shirt with an admiringly low v-neck, and those jeans that cling to her legs just so, and yes, he's observed that Sayori has a decent figure, he _is_ only a teenage boy after all, and—alright, so perhaps he's also noticed all of those things. But what he finds that makes all other observations obsolete is the widening spot of red on the girl's shoulder.

"Sorry. Got-got held up." Her forehead is shiny with sweat, and her shirt is _stained with_ _dried blood,_ and Sayori looks up at him with an expression that is so purely apologetic that Hanabusa barely knows what to say.

"It's fine," he says, once his tongue starts working again. "What…what happened to your arm?"

"Oh, this is nothing. A group of Slytherins thought it'd be smart to play darts with levitated swords. When I tried to stop them, one of the swords broke a window, and a piece of glass got me." She leans against the wall for a bit. "Everything's fixed now, but the lot of them have detention. Filch and McGonagall were quite cross with them. Shall we?"

She is already a few paces ahead of him before he decides to speak again. "You sure you're alright?"

Sayori turns around and gives him a quick, wry smile. "Positive. It wasn't a deep cut. We'd better get going."

Later, Hanabusa realises that those next three hours were the most amusing three hours of patrol he'd ever suffered through. On the moving staircases, Sayori describes how the Slytherins managed to steal all the swords from the sets of armour on the fifth floor. As they're making their way down from the Astronomy Tower, at his behest she mimics the expression on Filch's face when he saw the swords sticking out from a tapestry of Morgana le Fay. In the Great Hall, they debate just how a piece of glass could've fallen in such a way as to strike and maim her shoulder, and watching Sayori wave her arms about wildly, Hanabusa finds that maybe, just maybe, he's starting to change.

And when they are walking back to the common room, the bronze eagle knocker glinting in the dim lamplight, Hanabusa turns to the high-spirited girl next to him and swallows his pride. "Listen, Wakaba—thanks. For what you did that night last year." She looks at him. "I was drunk, and I let what they said get under my skin, and I lashed out at you like a right prick. And I shouldn't have."

Sayori looks at him and blinks twice. And her face breaks out into such a wide, gentle grin that Hanabusa feels the strange, almost unfamiliar sensation of heat rising into his face. He's blushing. He never blushes, he _hasn't_ blushed since…since…

"Y'know, I've realised that you and I can never really talk to each other unless one of us is in a complete mess. Why is that?"

Before he can answer, Sayori has already turned away, her boots tapping lightly on the stone floor. And Hanabusa is left with the oddest feeling that he's been forgiven, and the even stranger sensation that he's been scolded.

So the next time they patrol together—she's wearing that same pair of jeans, he unabashedly discerns—he turns to her with a story in his head and sweat on his palms. "So, Bill Lafferty, the bloke who commentates at Quidditch matches, Transfigured himself into the most bizarre-looking parrot today…"

* * *

A week into her sixth year at Hogwarts, and already Sayori can't seem to catch a break. Ever since Hanabusa Aido had begun to spend more time Yuuki and Zero, and, by association, _herself,_ more and more girls year three through seven had decided it's in their best interests to befriend her. Incidentally, more and more girls year three through seven had decided it is in their best interests to antagonise her as well.

While her dorm-mates appear to be, thankfully, more the former than the latter, many of the other Ravenclaws seem to see her as a threat. In the common room, she can feel the glares burning holes in the back of her neck. In the hallways, a great many women felt the need to meet her eyes, then turn their heads away dismissively. Even in the rowdy Great Hall, she hears whispers suddenly and suspiciously die out when she passes by a table. It doesn't help that they're both prefects, and Sayori can only assume this is why Yuuki has not been subjected to jealous stares in the corridors.

Nevermind the fact that Yuuki, ever the romantic, has taken to bringing up Hanabusa at every opportune moment.

"Is it so bad? Hanabusa seems to enjoy your company."

"'Enjoy' is an exaggeration. We're barely acquaintances. But I patrol with him three days a week, and suddenly I can't even go to the _library_ anymore without girls accosting me left and right! We didn't ask to be prefects. McGonagall chose us, for Merlin's sake. Half the female population is out for my blood and all because I'm trying to do a job I didn't ask for."

"I'm sure the patrols are not the only reason they're jealous. To tell you the truth, I don't really know Hanabusa that well, even if he tutors me. And as familiar as Zero is with him, they know each other just about as much as you can possibly know someone in the same year as you. Hanabusa never once thought about hanging around us until he began talking to you."

Sayori pauses at that. She has been curious as to why she'd been seeing the blond boy more and more. He'd known Zero for years; why was he only now showing it? But while Sayori had grown much more comfortable patrolling with him, they were far from being familiar enough with each other that she could ask him.

In fact, despite what the majority of the Hogwarts population still thought they were doing on their nightly patrols around the school, the two sixth-years' conversations primarily consist of comparisons between the merits of Muggle innovations and those of magical ones. Or, in the case of one Saturday in October, whether or not quills are the most useless writing tools in existence.

"Quills are entirely ineffective! The tips are constantly breaking, and you can hardly write ten words without having to dip it back in ink. Not to mention the horrible scratching noise they make when you write with them!"

"The tips wouldn't break if you didn't try and stab a hole through your parchment every time you use it, Wakaba. Don't try to deny it, I've _seen_ you in Arithmancy. You write like you're trying to carve into the table!"

"I wouldn't have to press so hard if quill ink didn't dry out in the time it takes to move from inkpot to paper. And you can't argue that quills are better than pens! You could write for hours and hours with a pen and there would still be plenty of ink. _And_ they move more smoothly across parchment than any quill ever could."

"You're missing the point. Quills add authenticity! You can't expect to succeed in a magical school in a crumbling castle in Scotland without _immersing_ yourself in history! Some of those books down in the library are older than England itself, and you'd do them the injustice of writing your Transfiguration essays with a mere _pen_?"

"So you do admit, then. Wizards only use quills for aesthetic purposes!"

"If only for the fact that _you_ must now admit that they're not, as you say, entirely useless."

Sayori scoffs, but it sounds more like a laugh than anything. "Right, and their sole purpose is to make wizards even more absurdly flamboyant than they already are."

"And is that such a bad thing?" Hanabusa raises an eyebrow. "Besides, you've quite a nerve to call wizards flamboyant. What about those flashy automobiles Muggles just _have to have_?"

"Oh, and I suppose if I were to go to Broomstix or Quality Quidditch Supplies I wouldn't find you lot drooling over the latest Nimbus model?" Sayori shakes her head. "Muggles actually use cars as a method of transportation. I've never seen anyone use a broom outside of Quidditch matches."

"Well, of course not. We have Apparition. Anyone in the Wizarding community could take three seconds to get to a place that'd take a Muggle half an hour in one of their _cars_."

"Yes, but Apparition is essentially teleportation, and who do you think came up with the idea? Wizards may have the means to do the impossible, but it's science fiction that gave birth to the concept of disappearing and reappearing in a completely different location. In fact, loads of the spells we can do now mightn't have even been discovered had not it been for the imaginations of Muggles!"

"Apparition's been around since the time of Merlin. You can't go around giving Muggles all the credit. Maybe it was a witch or wizard that started the whole fuss about teleportation just for laughs."

Sayori huffs incredulously. "And where's the historical evidence of that? You can't possibly know if wizards in Merlin's time knew how to Apparate!"

"And you certainly can't prove that teleportation's been around before Apparition! This is a causality dilemma! A chicken-or-the-egg situation!"

"Please, _obviously_ the egg came first. Two animals who weren't quite chickens laid an egg which happened to hatch the world's first chicken."

"Aha!" Hanabusa raised a finger at her. "Stop trying to change the subject, Wakaba. And that's only true if you see it from an evolutionary standpoint."

" _You're_ the one trying to change the subject! Bringing up Apparition in a debate about ostentation." But Sayori is laughing now, too hard to speak, and it feels _nice._ And she realises that perhaps she may have lied to Yuuki when she said they were barely acquaintances, because surely she couldn't possibly carry such a ridiculous conversation with any other acquaintance of hers. Surely she couldn't laugh like this, with a small part of her urging her to stop so that this conversation wouldn't ever end.

But they're almost done patrolling, and Hanabusa is staring at her with an expression she doesn't quite understand, so she manages to compose herself. "And really, are you, a self-proclaimed alchemist, honestly trying to bring the creation-evolution controversy into this?"

"Alright, yes, I heard it," concedes Hanabusa, scratching the back of his head. "The point sort of got away from me. Let's agree to disagree."

"Well…" Sayori grimaces. "I haven't even started on _robes_ yet."

"Oh, come _off_ _it_ …"

By the time she returns to her dorm, Sayori is in such a pleasant mood that, in a moment of unfortunate ignorance, she forgets to wipe away the soft smile on her face when she walks through the door. Right into waiting claws.

"Oi, look who's back! And with such a cheerful expression too!" Alexandra Blake, the tallest of her dorm-mates—and, quite possibly, tallest girl in their year—leaps from her bed and slings her arm around the much shorter girl. "Tell us, Miss Prefect, what's that beautiful blond _god_ done that's got you in such a good mood?"

"Oh, leave off, Blake!" Diane Soto calls from her seat on the floor. "Don't go interrogating the poor girl. She's probably still in a right state after spending so much time with Mr. Cerulean Eyes."

"Is that really what you call him?" Henrietta scoffs, setting her book in her lap.

"We've called him that for ages now," remarks Alexandra. "Really, Weber, keep up."

"Can't exactly call him anything else, can you?" Their fifth dorm-mate Marina Popov pipes in. "You lot fawn over so many blondes, it's ridiculous. There's Hanabusa, then Ben Jeffords, and Gregory Folger—nevermind that he's a prat—"

"Right, he's Greg Biceps! And Broody, that's the Kuran bloke in Slytherin—"

"Broody's not blond, though." Diane muses for a minute, and Sayori can't help wondering where exactly this conversation is heading. "Oh, Cream Top! Shayla Waterston in Gryffindor!"

"And Nona Griffin! She's Longlegs!" Alexandra sighs. "Blimey, we do fawn over a lot of blondes, don't we?"

"Seems to me you fawn over just about anyone who's remotely good-looking."

"Says a lot, then, that we don't talk about you, Weber?" Sayori expects a furious retort, but Diane is smiling good-naturedly, and Henrietta doesn't seem bothered in the slightest as she chucks her pillow across at the other girl, her eyes glued to her book.

"Enough about boys! And girls!" Marina declares. "You lot are all mad!"

"As mad as Henrietta's aunt?" Alexandra turns to the girl. "Merlin, I still can't believe she forced your sister to go all the way to Rochester at three in the bloody morning!"

"And to find her cat, no less." Diane shakes her head. "Poor girl."

"My sister deserved it. She's been kissing up to my aunt for years now…"

And Sayori thinks that after six years, she has grown so used to drowning out her dorm-mates and keeping to the library's silent tables that she cannot possibly expect to know anything about these girls. She's held people at an arm's distance, she realises, and based her assumptions on nothing. So she sits, and listens, and laughs as Henrietta raves about her family. And later, when the rest of her dorm is sound asleep, she can't help but at the fact that all it had taken for her to understand her own simple shortcomings was a fifteen-year-old boy and a silly, trifling conversation about quills.

* * *

It has been weeks, Hanabusa's cousin tells him, since Hanabusa has deigned to flirt with anyone. Months since he's gone on an actual date. Akatsuki claims Hanabusa hasn't been single for so long since _third year,_ that something must be eating away at him _._ The older Gryffindor tells him that yesterday that tall Alexandra Blake bird with the fantastic chest had winked at the blond Ravenclaw, and he hadn't so much as glanced her way.

But Hanabusa knows all this, knows just why he no longer feels the need to charm every girl he passes, and he doesn't care if Akatsuki doesn't know. After all, his cousin wasn't there that night in June, doesn't know what _really_ happened. He doesn't know that something _is_ eating away at the younger wizard, that perhaps if Hanabusa hadn't seen everything that'd happened that night, he might not have been so irrevocably changed.

Of course, his cousin also doesn't know what happens to him when he is with a certain Ravenclaw prefect. Because when he spots Sayori Wakaba reading by the kitchens before their patrol, wearing a shirt that barely covered her shoulders and a floral print skirt, he feels as though he's been punched in the gut.

Funnily enough, in this case Hanabusa _doesn't_ know what is wrong with him. He's ill. He's dying. He's been hit with a Cheering Charm, or a dose of Amortentia, or _something._ What else can explain the sense of… _relief_ of some sort…he feels whenever he sees that maddening witch waving at him, or smiling at him, or even walking towards him? And all right, the Amortentia is definitely stretching it, but at this point he is willing to suspect that all sorts of illicit magical forces are at work.

So when he sees Sayori walking towards him that following Friday evening, in those same _infuriatingly_ form-fitting jeans, Hanabusa opens his mouth. And even after six years of brawls and arguments and mischief, he still hasn't learned a single thing about tact. "Do you insist on never wearing your actual uniform on patrols?"

Sayori cocks her head to the side, her posture defensive. "Does it matter if I don't?"

"No," he answers quickly. "I've just…you're often wearing those jeans."

"I didn't realise you were so distracted by my clothes." And now she's smiling, and Hanabusa feels himself blushing—again—as she turns around and begins to walk down the corridor. After a moment in which he desperately tries to bring down the rush of blood to his face, the wizard follows.

"A first-year today asked me why there was no way to access the Internet here in the castle." Sayori chirps. "It seems the technological craze of the Muggle world has reached Hogwarts at last."

"A first-year wanted to go on the Web?" Hanabusa shrugs at the surprised quirk of his companion's mouth. "When you've got loads of Muggle cousins, you do pick up on _some_ non-magical trends, y'know? And believe me, they've mocked me enough about how they can send pages and pages of correspondence with the click of a button rather than writing letters out and waiting days on end for a response, so I'd better not hear any of that from you."

"I'll try my best." Sayori smiles. "Well, have they got online textbooks?"

Hanabusa groans. "There are digital _textbooks,_ now? Agrippa's sake, they'll never let me alone now. I'll be hearing about this for months. At least I'll have some inkling of the sort of jokes I'll be unwittingly subjected to."

"Oh, so you know of someone else who can tell you? I certainly don't understand how they work."

Pure, unsullied terror flashes through Hanabusa's head, but then Sayori begins to laugh at the expression on his face, and fear is quickly replaced by something that's far more enticing and just as dangerous. Her throat bobs when she laughs, he realises, and something about the sound that leaps from her throat and into his soul makes him think back to when his father had taken him to the top of an obscure hillock near Scotland's Knapps Loch at sunrise. _Selcouth,_ his father had described the burning sky. Something that is strange, and unfamiliar, and marvelous, all at once.

Hanabusa hears a bit of that raging, brilliant, selcouth dawn in Sayori's laugh.

"Don't worry, I expect I can help you there. Everything's been digital for about twenty years."

"Cheers, you tease." His voice sounds thick and scratchy in his ears.

"I'm not too keen on electronic novels, myself. It's loads easier than having to carry them around, but there's something about flipping a physical page that's just so much more…rewarding." She shrugs. "Though I admit, skiving off reading whole chapters with digital textbooks is a definite advantage."

"How d'you mean?"

"If you've really only got to look for key words or passages, there are keyboard functions that essentially point them out to you. It's quite ingenious, really." Sayori chuckles. "My dad's not too chuffed about that. Reckons all these advancements are turning us into lazy bums who deserve to get horrid scores."

"I'm afraid he's wrong there." Hanabusa stretches his arms. "I've barely been skimming my textbooks for three years, and my grades are superb."

"And that's bollocks." The witch next to him gives him a disbelieving look. "I saw you just yesterday with your Charms book open."

"Well, I wasn't—" He stops, his brow furrowed. "Actually, funny thing you should mention that trick with your electronic textbooks. Sounds like it has the same purpose as my spell."

"What spell?" And now Sayori's eyes are the size of Snitches. "You're not saying you know a spell that can find specific words _and_ outline them?"

"Well…it's technically _my_ spell. I came up with it."

" _You_ invented—" Her hands fly to her mouth, and that familiar rush of glowing pride that fills Hanabusa's chest doesn't come. Indeed, there is a slow, churning pit of dread and excitement settling deep into his stomach, and Hanabusa knows that it is because, for some inexplicable reason, this girl's opinion matters to him.

Her voice is muffled through her hands, but he hears her anyway. "How? When?"

"Around third year. I'm not—I don't know. I don't remember, maybe. I reckon I just wanted to try something out. My dad taught me a lot about the foundations of spellwork." He scratches his head. "It was only last year that I managed to figure out how to make the spell pinpoint individual words _and_ make them obvious, though."

"Wait," Sayori furrows her eyebrows. "Yuuki's mentioned this to me before. She said that you helped her find out where to look, helped make it easier for her to understand the texts. Did you—did you refine that spell for her?"

"Er…yeah, sort of." The churning mix of emotions has reached his chest, and Hanabusa blurts out. "Look, I knew she was really overwhelmed by the textbooks, a-and she didn't really get how to separate out important information, and, well, I wanted her to get it on her own, but…"

He trails off, because Sayori is shaking her head and chuckling under her breath. "You—you don't have to explain all this to me. I understand. Really. And I'm honestly still just in shock because…you were a thirteen-year-old wizard, and you created your own spell, and now you're telling me you specialised it to help a girl you hardly knew?"

"…I really can't tell whether or not you're happy about this."

She shakes her head again, and mutters something along the lines of "daft pillock" before she reaches out to squeeze his wrist with a look on her face he cannot hope to read. "You are brilliant. It's amazing."

Five little words melt away the nerves pounding on his heart, and finally he can feel that bright rush of pride—only it's different, infinitely more so, because Sayori Wakaba thinks he's brilliant, and it feels as though he's just now starting to believe it, too.

"Careful. You'll just inflate my ego." He swears the grin on his face could light up a city.

"Well, as much as I'd like to let you stew in your own self-respect," Sayori starts good-naturedly, and lets go of his arm. "Unfortunately, you still can't claim that technique of pinpointing key phrases as a product of magical innovation. After all, we mustn't forget the fact that this function has been in place in the Muggle world for years."

"Ah, but as you yourself once said, where's the historical evidence of that? And in the same sense, you can't claim that this is a product of Muggle innovation, either."

Sayori's eyes drift towards the ceiling of the hallway. "Apparently this is to be a matter of correlation rather than causation, then, as we can't very well shift claim to either side."

"Luckily for you, I know how to pick my battles."

Sayori raises her eyebrows at him, and he knows she remembers as well as he does that fateful night in fourth year. Ever so often, he finds himself thinking back, and hopes she didn't regret coming to his aid. He still has trouble, sometimes, connecting the warm girl in front of him to the sharp, careful words he'd heard that night. And occasionally, in the dark, late hours of the night, he realises he doesn't know whether to be impressed or afraid.

"Speaking of Yuuki," that same girl speaks up, "do you know anything about that Slytherin bloke that finished Hogwarts last year? Kaname Kuran?"

It's as though someone's burnt out the sun. The air is frigid against his skin, and his thoughts are a maelstrom of rage and white noise. He hears it in the tempest his mind has become, that terrible keening sound, the echoing snap, the dark voices. Some of them leak into his voice, a sound reaching him from far away. "Don't talk about him."

He's startled her, he sees, with his tormented expression and his horrible tone. But her posture shifts, and she closes her mouth when she nods, and they walk on, talking about nothing and everything, and all the while those sounds play on in the silence of his mind, a broken record.

* * *

Sayori doesn't find out why until Easter holiday of that year, and even then her own world has been shattered into so many, many cacophonous shades of horror and frustration that she barely thinks to listen.

But it is only Christmas, and Sayori has a very different situation weighing on her mind. Namely, her best friend's dawning and catastrophic awareness of her own complex feelings towards a certain tall, brooding Gryffindor, her silent companion from childhood.

It had always been completely obvious to Sayori that Yuuki fancied Zero in a way that was genuine, and innocent, and quietly _pure_ , in spite of whatever excessive, almost tormenting attraction she'd harboured towards that shifty Slytherin. And, as Hanabusa crudely put it, any tosser with eyes and half a brain could see that Zero was in love with his Hufflepuff friend. Now Kaname Kuran is gone, and while Sayori would never think of Yuuki as having half a brain, she did still often wonder why the girl would not put the lot of them out of their misery and simply tell Zero. And she tells Yuuki as much in the library one snowy day during the winter hols, pulling a grudging Hanabusa with her to conduct an intervention for their conflicted friend.

"I can't just…he's been my best friend for so long—"

Hanabusa's sigh is so loud, Sayori sees Madam Pince send a particularly ferocious glare towards their table. "Normally, birds don't fancy their best mates, Cross! Neither do blokes, for that matter. And seeing as neither of you are exactly normal, I'm willing to bet you and Kiryuu haven't ever been just best friends!"

"You've never been able to see the two of you from everyone else's perspective, Yuuki," placates Sayori. "In our eyes, Zero has always been yours, and you've always been his."

"Most of Hogwarts reckons you two are engaged, if I'm being totally honest," The blond wizard adds, leaning back in his seat. His untucked shirt rides up past his belly button, and it takes Sayori a moment to remind herself to look away from his exposed golden skin. "Sometimes when I'm patrolling I hope I find you two locked away in a broom cupboard somewhere. Hanging around you two lately is maddening, and it'd be a damn sight nicer than finding Melanie Irving getting on with Rodney Ackers for the fifth time."

Sayori shudders. She's seen enough of Melanie's bare bum to last a lifetime. "The point is, you're worrying about nothing, and it's making you both miserable. It's not fair to keep Zero waiting, and it's not fair to keep yourself from having something wonderful. And I've known you two far too long to not understand that it will be."

Yuuki doesn't look convinced. "If he's fancied me all this time, why didn't he say anything? Why suffer in silence?"

"It's because he cares for you that he keeps quiet." All trace of boredom and irritation is gone from Hanabusa's face, and in his eyes Sayori can see the same hardness she's always felt, settling in her spine when she's tried to shield Yuuki from the world. She thinks that, in a sense, perhaps Hanabusa has always been a shield for Zero, too. "As long as you're happy, it doesn't matter to him if he's your friend or your lover. He'd never let himself see you again if he thought you'd be better off without him. If he thought you would ever feel uncomfortable or irritated around him."

Sayori is caught in the strange fierceness of his gaze, in the silver frigidity of his tone, and marvels at the fact that this is the very boy she thought vain and conceited, with never a care for anyone but himself. How very wrong she was. Hanabusa's eyes glance towards her for a moment, and suddenly he blinks and leans back in his seat again. "Personally, I think he's bloody mad, and far too polite for his own good, but I can't make his decisions for him. Something I think Wakaba needs to realise before she drags another helpless bloke out of bed on a holiday."

Both girls ignore him, and Yuuki's eyes are shining with something akin to excitement and determination. "He…that stubborn, clueless git."

"Well now, that's a bit harsh coming from a girl who's only _just_ realised her best mate's in love with her," scoffs Hanabusa, but Sayori is smiling at the new expression on her friend's face.

"I should go find him. If what you say is…I've got to go!" And Yuuki is out of her seat and sprinting out of the library, Madam Pince's shouts chasing after her, and Sayori is left beaming brightly at a surprised Hanabusa.

"I think that went spectacularly."

"Hardly. Does that girl even know where Zero is right now?" Hanabusa stares across the table. "And she's even left her coat here!"

"Yuuki and I saw Zero sitting down by the lake earlier. He's not likely to have gone anywhere." Standing up, Sayori stretches her arms above her head, her sweater involuntarily rising a few centimetres above the waistband of her jeans. When she lowers her arms, she just barely misses how Hanabusa's eyes quickly, guiltily, flit back up to hers. "Come on. If we walk slowly, we won't catch them when they're still proclaiming their love for each other."

They walk through the Entrance hall doors, and Sayori breathes in the cold, biting air as large tufts of snow dance down around them. The sky is slate gray above them as they make their lazy trek across the grounds, the snow piling up to their knees. Against the pure whiteness of the frozen landscape, Hanabusa's hair glows as bright as the sun, and his eyes are chips of deep blue ice that snap alive with unbridled energy as he tells her how he used to sneak out to ice skate at night, under the stars. And Sayori stares at him out of the corner of her eye, and for one inexplicable, shining moment, she finds herself thinking that she wouldn't trade this moment here, walking and talking and laughing with this boy, for anything in the world.

The pair reach the Great Lake quicker than they'd intended—or perhaps it only seems that way to Sayori—and she barely has time to find Yuuki and Zero standing under the snow-covered beech tree before Hanabusa yanks hard on her arm and something cold and wet strikes her square in the face.

"Oh, damn. Sorry Wakaba, didn't see you there!" cries a familiar voice. Spitting out a bit of snow that's lodged itself in her mouth, Sayori looks into the grinning, blatantly unapologetic face of Marina Popov. To the girl's left, Diane is grabbing Henrietta and making kissing faces at her, right before Henrietta shoves a fistful of snow in her face. Near the lake's edge, Alexandra readies her aim towards Marina's turned back, but Ben Jeffords gets her in the shoulder before she can throw. There are dozens of shouts already drifting over to them.

"You've snow in your hair," Hanabusa says in a distracted voice, brushing water off her cheek, but Sayori barely hears him, because Marina's beam is infectious, and she's never had a real snowball fight before, never had the chance. Then, out of nowhere, Hufflepuff Seeker Takuma Ichijo all but tackles Hanabusa, shoving a handful of snow down the collar of his coat.

"Oi, don't you two just stand here like a pair of statues. Or have I interrupted a date? I'd always thought Wakaba was too pretty for you, Aido, especially since I've seen you stark naked and pudgy with—"

Then Hanabusa is gone, chasing after his friend, and Sayori is wadding up a hardened ball of ice and hurling it at a laughing Marina. And they're all shouting and screaming together, and Sayori and Diane are wrestling Alexandra to the snow, and Hanabusa is whooping gleefully as Akatsuki leaps into the icy lake. Because it's Christmas, and they're young and alive in this pure, ivory world, and this is their time.

Henrietta curses soundly when her soaking head resurfaces from the lake, and Tomas Ocampo cheekily yells at her to watch her language. In return, Diane shoves him in, and then jumps in herself, waving her arms about wildly. Sayori watches Alexandra attempt to bury a sputtering Rodney Ackers with snow and failing miserably before she simply waves her wand and sends a veritable wave of white collapsing over him. And Hanabusa's laughter rings out above it all, a deep sound reverberating into the frozen ground beneath her feet.

And because she knows it won't ever get any better than this, than having her friends' ecstatic screams and Hanabusa's laughter reaching deep into the glowing centre of her chest, Sayori thinks of what she feels right now, in the exact moment she raises her wand, and says, " _Expecto Patronum"._

* * *

He hears first years whispering about it in the common room, but it's only until one Henrietta Weber sits down next to him with the paper that Hanabusa understands:

 ** _DEMENTOR ATTACK ON HARTLAND MUGGLES: VICTIM COUNT DEVASTATING_**

"My parents told me the Dementor attacks have increased ever since the Ministry removed them from Azkaban." Henrietta shudders. "There's never been so many that attacked in one place before, though, and certainly not a town as small as Hartland."

Hanabusa is saved from answering when Zero materialises behind him, but when the blond boy turns around he finds that Zero's face is a sheet of rage and agony. And for reasons he cannot place, Hanabusa feels trepidation running a cold finger down his spine. "Kiryu, what's wrong. What happened?"

"Wakaba." And those cold fingers remove themselves from Hanabusa's back to enclose his chest in an icy grip. "Sayori Wakaba lives in Hartland. And Yuuki has been staying there with her."

Henrietta exclaims something, but he doesn't hear her. Instead, he remembers, suddenly, that day they ran and screamed by the frozen lake while Zero and Yuuki stood wrapped in each other under the beech tree. He'd been shaking the snow out of his hair, and watching Akatsuki try to get Ruka to join him in the lake, when he'd seen Sayori raise her wand and shoot something bright and silvery into the air.

His curiosity piqued, he'd trekked over to where she stood, her face the picture of delight and her wand held aloft, and he saw what she'd been seeing: a large, shimmering owl, gliding leisurely around the falling white flakes, nearly invisible against the bright sky.

And he couldn't help noticing how picturesque Sayori looked here, standing in the silver world, the snow in her hair glinting like diamonds, her eyes shining in the light of her Patronus. And yet, once again, Hanabusa had demonstrated how very much he still didn't know about delicacy and tact.

"Well, well. I'd expected you to be docking points for using magic outside of class, Miss Prefect. Instead I find you here blatantly disregarding your duties _and_ the rules."

Sayori shoots him an amused glance. "Oh hush, you. It's Christmas."

"I'm afraid the cold has got to your head. It'll be Christmas next week."

"I see Akatsuki's left you for his lady, and instead you've chosen to torment me. Now where have I seen this predicament before?"

"That'd be the result of your imagination, I believe. Déjà vu is, after all, only a feeling caused by a irregularities in your process of memory storage."

Sayori's face had fallen just slightly, and Hanabusa got the feeling that that wasn't quite the answer she'd been looking for. But before he could've said anything else, she spoke. "It's the first time I've managed to conjure one. A corporeal Patronus."

"R-right." His mind returns to that empty classroom in fifth year. "It's impressive. Not surprising, really, that yours is the bird of the wisdom goddess herself. That charm is some really advanced magic."

"Thanks." Sayori had beamed, and her owl glided lower and lower until it was level with him. He could picture how its large, silvery eyes would've looked, had it had them. Piercing and gentle and steady. Just like its caster.

"Y'know, I don't understand why you've always complained about my teeth catching the light," Sayori had said then, smiling as her owl faded away. "Yours are blinding."

Then he'd realised he'd been grinning, so wide his cheeks had grown numb. Or maybe that'd just been from the cold. "Well, and I didn't even have any of those miniature rail track Muggle torture devices you call _braces_ installed in my mouth."

The girl had laughed then, the bewildered sort of laugh you made when you didn't even really understand why you were laughing, and that word _selcouth_ had returned again to Hanabusa's mind. And now, when he finally finds that same girl sitting, irrevocably changed, by that same lake, days after he discovers just how much her world has crumbled, he doesn't quite know if he will ever hear that strange, unfamiliar, marvelous laugh again.

And perhaps he has learned something. Perhaps it is because of this girl and her brilliant teeth and her spectacular clothes and her uncanny ability to strike right into the very foundation of his being. Perhaps she's not the only one who's changed. So he walks over the lake's edge, under the newly budding beech tree, and for once he doesn't say anything at all.

* * *

Sayori can still hear their voices. Not their screams, because when they could've screamed they hadn't known what was happening, what was leeching away their very happiness. But their voices, shaking with fear even as they tried to stay calm, tried to get away from something they couldn't see. Asking her what that stick was in her hands, what those words she was shouting were, why the weather had turned so cold in April—

Her aunt Hana was going to be married. Her cousin Asami was turning nine in a few months. Mr. Sewell down the road had a new grandson, just born yesterday. Mrs. Claudia, who lived next door with her husband and three children, had given her family a basket of homemade raspberry scones when they'd moved to Hartland when she was three. And now they were all…

She knows Hanabusa is there, has been standing there beside her for an hour now, but some small, shameful part of her could care less about his pity and his condolences and whatever the bloody hell he hopes to accomplish by watching her.

Then—finally, _finally_ —he speaks. "Right after fifth year, my dad took my whole family with him to a business event. It was because of his business that he moved to England in the first place, and that I grew up here instead of back in Tokyo. The whole thing was some sickeningly posh party over a successful deal. The Kurans were there…and they'd brought four Dementors with them."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sayori sees Hanabusa look up at the sky, his voice thick with disgust. "Apparently they'd employed a few of the ones that'd drifted onto their lands in the North York Moors, and they brought them as _entertainment_ —it was more a twisted show of power and influence than anything. They insisted they'd had highly trained wizards training them, and their Dementors were tamed." His voice turns raw. "They said the trainers' Patronuses would keep them at bay, should anything go wrong. Of course something would go wrong."

"One of the Dementors got too close, and the wizard's charm failed. The party went all to pot after that, and the Dementors attacked." She hears his sharp exhale. "Kaname Kuran was standing in the path of one, and my dad tried to conjure a Patronus to save him. He tried to _save_ the Kuran boy, and when the Dementor turned to Kiss him instead, Kuran Disapparated. Without even a backwards glance." Her spine turns to steel. "I was trying to keep one from getting to my sister. Everyone else was either Disapparating, or fighting back, or…"

Sayori turns to look at him, then, and he isn't hiding his fury and pain and regret anymore, not burying it deep beneath the same, blank expression she's been seeing all year. And now she knows why he wears it. Because everything burning in his blue fire eyes is the same as what has been carving away at her heart. "It was done before I could even look away."

She doesn't apologise; he didn't tell her his story for pity or sympathy or comfort. She just remembers the terrible, terrible look he gave her when she asked him about Kaname Kuran. Then it is her turn, and she talks. She talks in her scratchy, hoarse voice that only gets scratchier and hoarser the more she speaks. She describes the dark, grey clouds that had begun gathering before the sun had risen, that were too much the norm in Hartland for anyone to grow suspicious. She talks about bringing Yuuki with her to her favourite stretch of beach, far below the towering cliffs. She grits out how the weather had grown disturbingly cold, and how they'd foolishly, stupidly, thought it to be the work of the ocean, and walked leisurely back to her neighbourhood. She talks about how her cousin had come running to find them, running because Mrs. Claudia's youngest daughter had fallen and was no longer moving, and she'd been sobbing before she fell, and Asami's own face was dripping tears. She talks about how they'd reached her house just in time to see a Dementor latch onto Mr. Sewell's mouth, and how her chest had grown heavy with the deafening sorrow and hopelessness and horror. She recalls how her Patronus swept the Dementor off her neighbour too late, how it grew dimmer and dimmer the more she tried to keep them—there were dozens of them on her street alone—off the people she's lived with for years, tried to chase them down to the cliffs with Yuuki, Yuuki who'd managed to conjure a nearly corporeal white tiger. She chokes out how her heart had cracked, and her Patronus was gone, and it was only Yuuki's tiger keeping them away, and it was not enough because she could see so many more escaping, attacking, _sucking_.

She talks about seeing her cousin Asami fall, limp and empty, from a filthy, skeletal hand, and how half of her wanted to let them Kiss her, if only so she wouldn't have to live with that image molded into her eyes for the rest of her life. She talks about how she would've let them, if only she hadn't seen Yuuki's petrified face as a Dementor leaned towards her. She talks about feeling this…this rage filling her chest and clearing her mind, and then flickering out as her mind remembered something that brought her to her feet, dragged her out of the deep, and produced a Patronus that kept the Dementors beyond the cliffs. She spits out how it burned, burned white-blue and unwaveringly against the dark cloud of Dementors until Ministry wizards finally, _finally_ showed up. She tells him about her dead.

There had been days of terrible, horrible silence after that, after Yuuki had gone back home, after they'd been called to the Ministry to explain what'd happened, to be consoled. There were moments she wanted to snap her wand and chuck it out into the ocean. There were moments she wanted to run away, to go somewhere else. There were moments she wished her parents would scream at her, punish her for being a witch, for being too weak to defend them from the unnatural world she'd dragged them into. And, she tells him, today she wants to do it all.

It's a long, long time before Hanabusa says anything, because he just looks at her. Just looks at her without flinching, his eyes staring at a singular point in hers. And it's as if he's drawing all of what she's feeling out, as if that look in his ocean eyes is pulling away at her emotions like the tide pulls at the shore. There's nothing in those eyes she can read.

And she knows he is, perhaps, the only person who could possibly comprehend the utter mess in her mind. So it is strange that, instead of feeling a kinship or a sense of empathy, she feels safe, feels as though she could forget everything, just by being here with him. "That entire summer, I thought of a million ways, each madder than the next. A million ways to kill a Dementor, to kill an amortal, un-killable being. I was stuck in research all summer, see, and I knew none of them would work. So I thought to myself that if I couldn't kill a Dementor, I was going to create a potion to bring their victims back. Something that could restore their souls."

Hanabusa is fidgeting now, fidgeting and shifting in front of her, his shaking hands gesturing. "But no potion can restore something like a soul, right? But I can't stop thinking about it, because what if one can? What if there's _something, anything_ that can restore souls?"

Sayori looks into his eyes that are no longer hiding but exploding with clarity, and knows that he knows it's impossible, knows that he needs to hear the truth from someone else, needs them to help him crush that devastating hope that lingers still. She clenches her fists where they hide in her jean pockets.

"Substantially, potions are liquids that affect only a drinker's physiology or psychology. The brain can function without a soul. The body still lives. A soul is neither physical nor a product of brainpower or perception. It's…it's what makes people human, gives them their sense of individuality, willpower. No potion or enchantment in the world can bring something like that back, once it is lost."

Hanabusa breathes out a curse in a tone that sounds a lot like relief, and she watches as he pulls out his wand. "I know. I know that. It makes so much more sense when you say it." He turns the wood over in his hands. "I hated this thing for a while. It was a stupid, useless walnut twig that couldn't do anything worthwhile, when it counted. But it isn't, really. And you know what else?"

He turns to her with a weary smile, and the old Sayori would've been ashamed of the fact that even though his hair is tousled, and his shirt is wrinkled, and his face is wan, her stomach still feels as though it's turned to jelly. But she's not the old Sayori anymore. "I've still got a million ways, and I've been looking all year. You can't restore the soul, or weld it to the body, or reinforce it. But you can reinforce your mind. Whether you're Muggle or magical, happiness is all chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, the lot of them. They're shunted from neuron to neuron until they paste a smile on your face, and _they_ are what I'll reinforce. I'm going to brew something that'll put such an armour around that entire damn system that not even a thousand Dementors can touch it."

As she pulls herself up, up from the hard earth, to stand in front of him, Sayori finds that even after two years, Hanabusa Aido never ceases to astound her, with his words and his thoughts and his good, good heart. And just this once, she wants to surprise him. So she doesn't mind, doesn't think twice, about opening her mouth. "Back then, the second time I tried the charm, I thought of you. I conjured the Patronus too late, too late to save them, but to create it I thought of you. Of the patrols, and that day you told me about the spell you made, and how you always keep me on my feet with your arguments. I thought of you, and it worked. Why is that?"

There is a fierce determination in his face that has been there since the first moment he told her he was going to find a way to balance the scales, to use that brilliant mind of his and fight back. But there's pleasant shock there too, and an odd softness she's been seeing in his face since Christmas. She realises she's stopped digging her fingernails into her palms when he squeezes her hand in his. "Why is that? It's because I was wrong. It wasn't just your mouth back in first year, wasn't your braces at all, in fact. It isn't your laugh that's…that's _selcouth_. It's just you. You've been catching my eye, all this time. That's why."

Sayori's been expecting a different answer, but as her head goes light and the places she's touching him begin to tingle, she reckons that one'll do just fine. Hanabusa doesn't break his gaze. "And you'll help me. You are strange and unfamiliar and marvelous, Sayori Wakaba, and you'll help me with this and with the entire bloody _life_ business, too. Because I can do all of it without you, but by _God_ I don't ever want to."

She stares into the face of hard, commendable, adamantine resolve, and huffs out a laugh. He's audacious, this boy she loves, and arrogant, and so sure of himself. But she knows that already, just as she knows he _can_ indeed do this, and he does indeed love her genuinely and innocently and purely. Sayori puts her other hand atop his, and smiles. "Well, of course."

 **~fin~**

* * *

 **A/N:** And years and years and years afterwards, someone came up with a way to kill Dementors. I'm not even joking. Dementors are dicks.

I actually fell out of Vampire Knight for a few years because of many, many reasons I won't go into. Then I found out Sayori got together with Hanabusa, and I loved that idea, so naturally I had to find out more. What I discovered is that my girl Sayori is Snarky™ and Takes No Bullcrap™ and my son Hanabusa is Catastrophically In Love™. And now here we are.

I wanted to have Hanabusa create something that sort of draws parallel to the vampire cure he made in the manga, so that's what that whole bit about the Dementor's Kiss cure (which can't exist, as you've read) and the new protective potion he goes on to create with Sayori is about. Sayori gets cut in the manga as well, the part where Hanabusa's father's soul is sucked out at a party because of Kaname Kuran is a reference to his death in the manga, and so on and so forth.

First piece in The Armada series! Co-posted on AO3 (my name there is wild_and_free)

 **ALL CHARACTERS ARE MY ORIGINAL CHARACTERS EXCEPT FOR THE FOLLOWING: Minerva McGonagall, Kaname Kuran, Yuuki Cross, Zero Kiryu, Hanabusa Aido, Hanabusa's father, Takuma Ichijo, Sayori Wakaba, Sayori's father, Akatsuki Kain, and Ruka Souen**


End file.
